You may vote Ban, Do Not Ban, or Abstain for Cresselia. Remember, if you are unsure about a Suspect's tiering, do not vote to Abstain, vote Do Not Ban instead. Abstain is only an option for those who do not want to vote for a Suspect, for whatever reason. That is different from being uncertain where a Suspect should be tiered.

Also when voting, Council members please give a little description explaining your votes, since this is replacing the IRC-discussion aspect of the Council setting. I'll be paying special attention to those reasonings this time around and if I feel that your reasoning is exceptionally poor, (ie. you don't give one or you talk solely about the MegaMoth meta) I may end up just throwing the vote out, either for or against a cress ban.

The suspect for this round is Cresselia. Remember, we are requiring a 7-2 supermajority in order for Cresselia to be banned at this time.

Remember, all admins, supermods, or PR mods voting (coughNailscough), you need to delete your post in order to keep this a "blind" vote.

This thread will be open until Friday, January 6 at 11:59 pm EST or until all votes are in.

k, since i like to be different from other people and cba in writing stuff everyone's gonna mention about cresselia, i'm gonna speak about overcentralization she causes and how she forces people to overprepare. she forces everyone to carry stuff who would be near worthless otherwise (looking at crotomb, since i don't think it'd be as "good" as it in this metagame and sd drapion to an extend, since your usual drapion will be doing near 20% with crunch and can be stalled out iirc. SERIOUSLY, the later is skarmPISS weak, even with a boost under its belt). then there's the usual stuff everyone's going to say, which i said i wasn't gonna say but i will cause my vote probably won't be counted otherwise. she's the bulkiest mon in ru, the best monoattacker (seriously, she only needs either psyshock or ice beam to overkill), one of the best support pokemon (with acess to lunar dance, thunder, wave, screens etc) and overshadows to an extend most psychic-type pokemon, such as uxie. if she's banned, that means people wouldn't need to run a dark-type pokemon in every team they make (there's still sigilyph though) and there would be some more variety. oh, did i already mention that it was already deemed broken before even with yanmega and venomoth around?

and since this will go public anyways, shoutouts to cherubagent for helping me building this amazing team, which allowed me to be here voting cresselia

Cresselia's defenses are quite ridiculous for the tier, even avoiding a 3HKO from Drapion Crunch's, and spreads Thunder Wave very easily, also SubCM is just almost unstopable with the right support, as it setups very easily since its incredible hard to break the sub and damage it and subs blocks status. It's also a great support for weather teams, since it can came in all day and set up the weather with a little fear and then you have to go struggle yourself against the weather sweepers. Her defenses are just too high to the tier, thus, ban.

I was really leaning close to no ban, since quickbans are pretty drastic, but cresselia is just too too good. Dual screens lunar dance is kind of neat but it's not broken; mesprit can run the exact same set and it's not even used. SubCM can be devastating with the right support but... so can a lot of other stuff. It honestly wasn't that impressive in my opinion. It's certainly a dangerous set but were it the only cresselia set I wouldn't consider it broken.

The set that makes cresselia broken in my opinion is simply the defensive set, and its ability to wall opponents with incredible bulk while crippling would be counters with paralysis and toxic. There really aren't very many pokemon that can break through Cresselia. Durant needs a choice band and hustle to guarantee a 2hko cresselia with super effective STAB (well... 64% of the time of course). SD Drapion sucks at everything else, and can't ohko Cresselia with a +2 Life Orb Crunch. Rotom can't even 2hko with Shadow Ball... against a physically defensive Cresselia. Again, these are all super effective STAB moves I'm listing. Cresselia is just way too bulky, and way too good at spreading status around, and it doesn't belong in the tier.

I started the month thinking the same thing everyone else is; fuck Cresselia, it's gonna dominate everything and we should try to make its second term in RU as short as possible.

But then I started playing the new meta, and I realized it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Cresselia is not dominating the ladder at all. Nails got to #1 using a team of six strong offensive mons thrown together. One of those happened to be CB Durant, which poops on Cressy's head, but having a strong mon that can hurt Psychic-types was a good idea last round too. I played with each of Cressy's big 3 supposedly broken sets, and I can only point to a couple of battles and say "Cresselia won me that match." I can point to quite a few where Feraligatr or Steelix or Omastar won it for me. I also haven't lost a single match because an opposing Cresselia was too strong; in fact, I've barely seen opposing Cresselia at all. For all the talk of Cresselia being broken and centralizing the metagame, it sure is rare. You can't call something broken if it's not consistently kicking either you or your opponent's ass. Each individual set has a nice list of checks and counters, and CroTomb and Specially Defensive Drapion can handle every set at once. And this isn't Rayquaza or Salamence who punishes you with instant death if you guess the wrong set. It takes several boosts for Cressy to become threatening, and you shouldn't be letting it get several boosts (if you do, you probably would have lost anyway).

Remember, if you are unsure about a Suspect's tiering, do not vote to Abstain, vote Do Not Ban instead.

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This is important, especially for a quickban. Cresselia is a strong Pokemon. It's probably the best wall in the tier now, and the SubCM set is deadly if your checks/counters get worn down too much. But "best" =/= "broken", and "deadly once checks/counters are eliminated" =/= broken either. Based on what I've seen so far, I definitely can't say I'm "sure" that it's broken, so this vote is a pretty easy choice for me. Give it some more time; either it starts to dominate and we ban it at the end of a real round, or people learn how to beat it without overpreparing and we accept it.

First of all, I just want to say that the amount of time given to determine whether or not Cresselia is ban worthy is inadequate. All this theorymoning about how Cresselia will be too much for the metagame is pointless. Lilligant and Honchkrow were first thought to be too powerful, but eventually everyone adapted without having to overprepare. Honko's post made in the Cresselia discussion thread led me to believe that this might be possible for Cresselia if given the time.

As for the Pokemon itself, it has caused an immediate spike in the usage of dark type pokemons. Almost every team I faced either had Spiritomb or Drapion, sometimes even both. Personally I think this is an overreaction to Cresselia returning to RU as everyone believed that it was too powerful the first time therefore it is too powerful this time around. If given enough time, better strategies might arise instead of stacking Dark type pokemons.

My experiences with Cresselia has also influenced me to not kick Cresselia out of the tier yet. It's not like Cresselia is sweeping through teams with ease, although this may be due to the overpreparation that I mentioned earlier. Each of its sets has its disadvantages so Cress cannot be labeled as the undisputed best pokemon for the job. Its Dual Screen set is slower than Uxie and doesn't offer SR support. Mespirit can match Cresselia's Lunar Dance with Healing Wish and offers SR support. Its offensive movepool is pretty bad and a CM set can be easily stopped with Toxic or through phazing since it lacks immediate power. The defensive set is probably where Cresselia shines the most since it can check a lot of things and doesn't get worn down by hazards. With Snover out of the way its easy to replenish its health too. However I don't think enough time has been given to see if this set really has the impact that all the hype leads us to believe it will have. Definitely does not deserve a quick ban.

Cresselia, from what I have seen, is not broken. Out of her three main sets (Support, Dual Screens, SubCM), only SubCM has a chance at being broken, as Support and Dual Screens just haven't been that amazing. Cresselia's main flaw is that it is just so pitifully weak, which makes it set-up bait for a slew of Pokemon. It is also incredibly vulnerable to status unless it uses moves such as Magic Coat, Substitute, or Psycho Shift, which take up a valuable moveslot which Cresselia usually cannot afford to lose in any set. However, Support (252 HP / 252 Def Bold) Cresselia is not "able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame" that well either. Most special attackers still do a good chunk of damage to Cresselia, and Cresselia really can't do much back aside from Thunder Wave / Toxic. Cresselia does wall some physical sweepers such as Medicham and Rhydon, but others can still bypass Cresselia with relative ease. For example, Choice Band Entei's Flare Blitz has a good chance to 2HKO a Bold 252 HP / 252 Def Cresselia after Stealth Rock. Add Moonlight's paltry 8 PP to this, and it becomes significantly harder for support Cresselia to successfully wall a significant portion of the metagame without plenty of support.

Cresselia's Dual Screens set is similarly not broken. Cresselia's huge bulk is definitely appreciated since it helps to get screens up, but Cresselia's lack of other support options in comparison to Pokemon like Uxie and Mesprit means that in some cases, I'd actually rather use one of them over Cresselia since even though they lack the bulk she has, they have access to Stealth Rock, which is incredibly valuable to most set-up sweepers. Cresselia is a good Dual Screener, but it's not so much better than other Dual Screeners in the tier that it's broken.

SubCM is Cresselia's most threatening set in my opinion, but even then, it's easy enough to stop. A lot about SubCM really depends on the EV spread that is used, so I'll talk about them seperately:

- Bold 252 HP / 252 Def SubCM Cresselia makes it easy to set up, and her subs hard to break. Unfortunately, this makes Cresselia significantly easier to status, and without any Speed or Special Attack investment, Cresselia fails to hit hard enough or be fast enough to threaten most Pokemon. Offensive teams can just keep smashing Cresselia's subs, and strong physical attackers will still do a number on Cresselia; Pokemon like the aforementioned CB Entei can still break her Substitutes and threaten her. And, no Speed EVs means that there are even more Pokemon who are able to outspeed and threaten Cresselia; stuff like Aggron, Crawdaunt, Crustle, and Swords Dance Kabutops can now outspeed and threaten. The worst thing is, Cresselia can't even do much in return, since her attacks are still pitifully weak after a single Calm Mind.

- 252 HP / 252 Spe Timid Cresselia means that Cresselia can outspeed and set up Substitutes on more Pokemon, making her less vulnerable to status. However, without the huge amount of defensive investment of the former spread, Cresselia's Substitutes are significantly easier to break. Additionally, Cresselia isn't even that fast with that many Speed EVs, and she is still outsped by a slew of offensive threats.

- 92 HP / 164 SpA / 252 Spe Timid Cresselia (or something similar; basically, any Cresselia with significant investment in Special Attack). While Special Attack EVs, Cresselia can actually threaten things after less Calm Minds, but depending on the stat you take EVs out of to invest in Special Attack, Cresselia's Subs will be too easy to break, Cresselia will be too slow to do much, or a combination of the two.

However, it is also important to note that SubCM still is vulnerable to phazing no matter what EV spread. Fast special attackers will be able to take a big chunk out of Cresselia's HP, and since Cresselia will probably lack a recovery move (unless you sacrifice coverage for Moonlight, which means you're completely walled by Dark-types), she will be extremely weakened. Speaking of coverage, Cresselia's coverage is generally quite poor; Psychic + Ice Beam fails to hit bulkier Dark-types and Steel-types hard, which allows Pokemon such as Steelix or Specially Defensive Drapion to come in a phaze her. If Cresselia has Psychic + Hidden Power Fighting instead, she is completely walled by Spiritomb and will have issues with Pokemon like Honchkrow instead. SubCM Cresselia also won't be hitting too hard until it manages to obtain at least 3 or more boosts, which gives you plenty of time to phaze it, or at least switch in a strong physical attacker to make it switch out or lose a huge chunk of HP.

To finish this off, I would like to say that I think it is far to quick to ban Cresselia. With less than a week to test Cresselia in this new metagame, I feel that it is unfair to ban it this quickly. Like Honko said in this and this post, it takes time to develop counters and checks to a Pokemon without necessarily having to overprepare, and in my opinion, Cresselia is not a Pokemon who is completely uncounterable. I would personally like to wait a bit longer before deciding whether or not to ban Cresselia - even if it's just to the actual end of the round - to see if more viable checks and counters can arise.

Defensive Cress: Well, we didn't have a large period of time to test her in meta... I didn't even see a lot of cress in ladder or unrated RU battles. As far as I know about the metagame, it's kinda hard to cresselia being broken, because we have a large incidence of bug, dark and ghost moves. Her defensive set just proves that Cresselia is nothing but another hard-to-kill wall. That set has huge risk to be setup foder to another pokemons thought, as subs setupers are quite common in RU (Bulk Up subs pinsir, sd subs pinsir, bulk up subs gallade, subs cm uxie, etc.) and also hazard setup foder (ferroseed, steelix, clefable, etc.). Defensive Cresselia is nothing but an annoying wall.

Subs CM: Known as a better Uxie Sub CM, this set is more threatening. Has the hability of making 101hp subs and is more bulkier than Uxie, with less speed and unable to learn Thunderbolt. I have in my mind two counters of this set (They are also a full Cresselia counter): Durant and CM Restalk Spiritomb. There are also a lot of pokemons who can hit cresselia hard without being significantly damaged by her, like Crustle, Drapion and Crawdaunt and to be honest, with whimscott at RU it's difficult to bulky setupers like Cresselia become broken.

IMO Cresselia came to RU just to be a great wall and an okay setuper. She is far from getting things centralized around her, having two pokes who completely crush her chances of sweeping or stall (Durant and CM ResTalk Spiritomb).